Letter From California

by paradox

02/07/2010 0540.48 PST
San Jose, California

Good luck and best wishes to the respective States of Louisiana and Indiana as your noble and mighty representatives of the National Football League beat the shit outta each other today in a contest of grace, gluttony, sanctioned violence and happy good times all around. It’s a shame someone must officially lose in all the magnificent spreads of food, drink and laughter, yes, but hopefully the lesson to ignore the football, concentrating totally on food, drink and your people on a State and Federal level has sunk in enough, enjoying the celebration just, well, because.

We in California have gleefully undertaken the modern American tradition Super Bowl parties, frolics and food, a very welcome development carried on from the late 20th century. In Mexico, it is said, almost anything and everything is cause for a celebration, something busy hectic Californians should surely welcome more often in their own lives. Frequent fun times are good for the soul, bespeaking of a mind and people where few hate us and hardly anything is spent on weapons. Basic investments in society from a wise people yield a need to laugh and have a good time often because, well, that’s the way life’s supposed to be.

Alas, there is mass unemployment and militarism run amok in the land, investments neglected, Sacramento ever scurrilous in its inept cruelty as it adamantly refuses to accept the basic truth some taxes have to be raised. All the more reason, then, for everyone possible to take a break with some great food and friends just for the hell of it, Lord knows Californians deserve a break after a decade of inept, fumbling government.

I seem to be lying low most of the time as I glide out life, my favorite soda, a few friends and meticulously prepared guacamole with scoop white corn chips will do me perfectly this Super Bowl. One of my sisters prefers the minimalist version with nothing but salt and lemon juice, while I often like a little fresh jalapeño and cilantro, too, I haven’t made up my mind which one to make yet.

I’m actually a fan of the NFL, I’ll be interested in the football and mutely disdainful of the commercials, as always. A national holiday of drinking and gluttony, fine, but half of it centered around television commercials? Ugh. How gauche, how classically commercial American.

It’s a blindingly-bright open secret all up and down this great land that the great Foodie Holiday of Football is hardly better served than with a cannabis case of the giggles and raging munchies, all will listen and be reassured as millions of bubbling bongs slowly create a soft roar in the Republic before kickoff. Something very regionally strange has happened with the State’s slow march to legal marijuana, the great day when the grossly obtuse and cruelly stupid Federal pot club raids stopped finally happened with the election of Democrats, the holy hour of hash hookahs outside of Starbucks almost here.

Yet our while our Southern brothers and sisters wholly embraced the great news, pot clubs springing up by the hundreds like mushrooms in Los Angeles, things have been strangely quiet and silent about cannabis here in Northern San Francisco climes. We hear the fascinating stories of busty Los Angeles bikini vixens slowly twisting hips and bright placards on the street that say hey, you wanna pot card? Follow this hip to the doctor, honey, of course anyone can see how sick you are, the legal burn of holy purple hair is soon to be yours.

That, of course—very regrettably, damn, it sounds like a fine way of city life to me—was too much, even for Southern California, so soon hundreds of pot clubs will close. That can’t be all of the story, but like I said, it’s a SoCal thing, I hardly know anything about it, one would think with the Haight and Berkeley’n Santa Cruz and all the rest the mighty march of the buds would have started in my stoner neck of the woods, but it just didn’t. NorCal is pretty snobbish about its superior way of life compared to our smoggy Disney cousins, actually, and for once I find myself surprisingly envious of them.

Not to worry, of course, cannabis leads to bloated, sleepy beings, satiated from gluttony and insulated from grinding labor. Have fun, good luck Indiana and Louisiana, party on and sleep well, dudes, it’s a long work week ahead, Monday waiting for us.